Time to sacrifice and bring up our own children

Thursday June 25, 2009

Most of us are all too dependent on foreign maids to do house chores and taking care of children. There are benefits and also problems.

As for me, I have given up on hiring foreign maids. Our previous three Indonesian maids had their share of problems. We were tricked by the maid agency a few times.

Two out of the three maids didn’t pass the Fomema health screening and in the end, my wife had to resign from her job due to all these problems.

For starters, there is a significant loss of income but the benefits are very significant. No more headaches on foreign maids and we saved money on maid agencies and annual levy to be paid to the Immigration. It was a lot - if you need to pay RM5,000 yearly to get a new maid and if the current one keep giving problems.

Since resigning from her job, my wife is with the children all the time. She kept close monitoring of their school performance. She is the one who fetch them from school and send them to extra classes. You cannot be too dependent on school bus nowadays. She cooks healthy food for them.

With all these, I noticed they excel in their school examinations.

As a husband, you still need to do your part of the job. You need to give support and do household chores after work or at night.

As for the loss of income, it was not a big matter. I got a promotion after my third daughter was born and when my fourth daughter is two-years-old, I was given another promotion. All these have evened up the loss of income.

Apart from that, knowing that my wife are always there with the children, I can do part-time jobs during weekends for extra income.

I don’t even have to care about the controversy of giving the maids a day-off. Without hiring any foreign maid, our family is more settled now. No more headaches of all the problems of foreign maids. And I know that at all times, my children are in good hands.

NO MORE FOREIGN MAIDS,
Kuantan.